Parenting with Intention in a System Designed for Default | Nathaniel A. Turner

What if the most important thing you ever build… is your child’s life?

In this powerful episode of The Gentle Year, Knikki Hernandez sits down with Nathaniel A. Turner—TED speaker, author, and founder of the League of Extraordinary Parents—to challenge everything we think we know about parenting, education, and what it really means to raise a capable, fulfilled human being.

Nate introduces a bold idea: most parents are raising children—but very few are intentionally designing the adults those children will become. Through deeply personal stories and a systems-thinking approach to parenting, he shares how he and his wife reverse-engineered their son’s life using principles inspired by a Harvard application—focusing on intellectual ambition, global awareness, and humanitarian purpose.

From early literacy and language exposure to identity, culture, and responsibility, this conversation explores:

• Why most parents are “waiting” instead of designing
• The hidden cost of low expectations in modern parenting
• How early childhood (0–7) shapes everything that follows
• The difference between self-directed learning and intentional life architecture
• What The Lion King reveals about fatherhood, responsibility, and legacy
• Why love, not pressure, is the foundation of high achievement
• How one family raised a child to become a PhD, entrepreneur, and global thinker—without wealth or privilege

Nate also offers a compelling critique of today’s education system, grading it a “D,” and explains why parents—not institutions—must take ownership of their child’s future.

This is more than a parenting conversation. It’s a cultural wake-up call.

Continue the Conversation:
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Supported By:
Turning The Tide Tutoring – Helping students develop strong writing, communication, and critical thinking skills so they can express themselves clearly and confidently.

Acting with Pippi – Acting classes with Tami Erin (the original Pippi Longstocking) designed to build confidence, creativity, and authentic self-expression in children—without pressure or performance-driven environments.

Turning The Tide Tutoring
Sponsored by Turning The Tide Tutoring — empowering students and parents to grow and thrive.

Acting With Pippi
Acting with Pippi is acting program that helps youths build courage & presence through performance.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

What kind of life is your child actually growing into? And who decided that? Is it something that you shaped with intention or something that's being shaped for you by someone or something else? And years from now, when your child becomes an adult, will you recognize how they got there? Today's conversation is about responsibility, identity, and the role we play in shaping human life. Welcome to the gentle year. The Gentle Year is a safe space for thoughtful conversations about parenting, personal growth, and the kind of lives that we're shaping, both for ourselves and for the next generation. This is a place where we slow down, ask better questions, and explore the ideas that influence how families think, learn, and grow. If you're listening today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Index, iHeartRadio, Podcast Addict, Pod Chaser, PlayerFM, Overcast, Castbox, Good Pods, or True Fans, welcome. And if you'd like to continue these conversations beyond the podcast, you can also join us in the Gentle Year Facebook group where listeners share ideas, reflections, and support with one another. This work is also supported by a few incredible partners who care deeply about the same mission. Turning the Tide Tutoring helps students develop strong writing, communication, and critical thinking skills so that they can express their ideas clearly and confidently. Acting with Pippi offers acting classes with Tammy Aaron, the original Pippi longstocking, where kids build creativity, confidence, and storytelling skills through performance. I'm grateful for each of them and the work they're doing to support young people and families. And with that, let's begin today's conversation with Nathaniel Turner. Mr. Turner, could you please tell us a little bit about your background, who you are, what you do, and how you do it, please?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

First, Miss Hernandez, I'm just going to be Nate. I'm just going to be Nate. Nathaniel gets me in trouble. It means I'm in trouble. I am the the simplest way to explain who I am, I am the son of Tommy and Gladys Turner, the brother to a lot of people, but biologically to Kimberly, the husband of Latanya and the father of Naeem. And the reason I'm here with you today primarily is because we have an organization that we started many years ago called the League of Extraordinary Parents, where our objective is to do some of the things you described, which is to help parents, but primarily help parents create a life for their children that goes well beyond what they could have ever imagined.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

I really appreciate that. Thank you. Now, can you define extraordinary parent for us as we begin this conversation? Because we're gonna dive into a lot of cultural elements today that people may be particularly sensitive to. So I want to just kind of go over that word and what you mean by extraordinary and whether you consider yourself an extraordinary parent and why that may be okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Good. That's a lot. So um what is extraordinary? Extraordinary is extraordinary. So um there is a lot of ordinariness with parenting in America. This is not an attempt to criticize anyone, this is just a recognition that there is a lot of ordinariness. So I'm gonna give you an example of what I would consider ordinary. In America is an example, by the third grade, two-thirds of all third graders are incapable of reading at third grade level. Mothers and fathers have children. That means they have third grade is for some people, eight or nine years old. We have until a child is eight or nine to make sure a child can read at a particular grade level that we know that the majority of children struggle at reading at. And yet, year after year, those numbers don't improve, those numbers get worse. That for me would be ordinary parenting. An extraordinary parent has a plan so that when my child gets to be a third grader, my child is reading at a third grade level. Because an extraordinary parent understands that the likelihood that if I can't read at a third grade level by the third grade, that means that I have a nine in ten chance of graduating from high school, unable to read, write, do math or science at a basic proficiency level. And then at a time when mostly everyone is talking about the use of AI, I have essentially sentenced my child to a very marginal, the likelihood, the probability of a much uh less generous, less fulfilling life because I did not have plans, because I did what most ordinary people do. I wait for somebody else to decide what's best for my child.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Yes, that is quite the commentary on what extraordinary versus ordinary parenting looks like. And as a teacher, I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of the literacy rates in this country. Personally, I know that humans are far more capable than what we are led to believe. And I personally think that the expectations that adults have of children are far too low. And as a result of that, those low expectations are now crippling our youth well into adulthood. And so when you talk about parents who have a plan, I would bet to say that most parents don't have a plan. You already commented on that and said that most parents are waiting for somebody or something to step in. Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

I think that our nation does parents a disservice. I think our nation does, and I don't say the nation, I think the nation does not only parents a disservice, it does its citizens a disservice. The nation every year, if you will, uh not the nation, the world, the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperative Development, each year publishes a document called The Future of Work every single year. Every Thursday, our nation tells us about the jobs report. People will tell us about what skills are required and so on and so forth. And yet, despite this information, we allow, or I shouldn't say allow. I would maybe we permit people to act as though someone else is going to solve the problems for your own children. They're just not. We know more about putting a car seat in than we do about being a parent. And something's wrong with that. 36 hours after you hit you have a baby, they send you home. Um you can take Lamas for a number of weeks and learn how to eat ice chips and so forth. But but as a nation, we don't offer parents any training, any coaching. We we need licenses for everything else. And I'm not suggesting that we need government to be in our bedrooms and determine, but I do think it will be useful to people to say, oh, here's some things that absolutely will work and get your child started and get a head start, a real head start on life.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Yeah, that's interesting, especially the part about government being in the bedrooms and government also being in our living rooms, so to speak, and kind of raising our children with us and for us. And there's a whole cultural, ideological conversation that could be had on that topic. But what stands out to me mostly is that you had a plan. And when you introduced yourself at the very beginning of this podcast, the first thing that you said was, I believe, unless my memory is, my memory is quite fallible, but I believe you had said that you were the son of this person and that person, and that was how you introduced yourself. This was not, that's not the norm. That's not the norm. If somebody says, who is Nikki Hernandez? Tell me who you are, or if you go up to anybody random in the street and you say, Hey, you know, who are you? Tell me about yourself. No one except for you says, I am the son of so-and-so. Is that is there a reason for that? It almost sounds biblical.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

It it it does in some ways, but so yes, my my responsibility on this planet is to honor my my parents. I can no longer my father is no longer here. But the only but my father is here because every time I do good or bad, um, those who knew my father then remember him again. So I just try to keep his name relevant and I just say, hey, I am the product of Tommy and Gladys. Gladys is still living. Um, they're my trees, I'm the fruit. And now I have a now I'm a tree and I have some fruit, but um I will forever be known by those two lenses, the child of Tommy and Gladys and the father of Naeem.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

I love that. And I definitely want to use that from now on. Anyone here, if I go on a job interview and somebody says, Tell me about yourself, I'm gonna It's yours. Let's start off that way, just to kind of see what their reaction is.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Um it's a you it's a unique way, right? Because nobody else can say that. A lot of people can say I'm a lawyer. Yes, I could have said, Hey, Nikki, I, you know, I'm I'm a trained lawyer and I have a degree in accounting. And I like, yeah, but somewhat a lot of people have that. But not everybody can say that I'm the son of Tommy and Gladys. That's exactly the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

There's a level of pride in saying that. And I think that that is a reflection of the strong families, the exceptional and extraordinary families that you are working with and striving to create and build in your program. So I have to ask, you're the son of your of your two parents, and pardon me if I don't remember their names always, I gotta write it down. But did you you you talked about having a plan? Did your parents have a plan when they raised you?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Absolutely not. They had no plan. Although I will say this to have no plan is a plan. So my parents didn't have an intentional plan, but because they didn't have an intentional plan, they unintentionally made a plan.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Yeah. What were the consequences of that? Because in today's world, when I see parents without a plan, and I see parents who do not see themselves as the architects of their children's lives, and I don't mean that they're controlling every aspect of their child's lives. I get it. But when I see parents who take that hands-off approach in today's world, I see kids who are just lost. Was that your experience?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, but I'll say this. So I've I'm old. I'm old, Nikki. I was I was born. I'm old. I was born in 1965. Um, so I'm Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03 11:34

You were born a year before my mom. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Uh well, see, see, so I'm old. Your mom would say, yeah, girl, he's old. No, she wouldn't. She'd be like, I'm young. So so, but the world was different. So I'm I'm I'm originally from Gary, Indiana. And Gary, Indiana in 1965, night in 1970s, and early part of the 80s was a very different place. The the whole city felt in many ways like my village. People people felt a sense of responsibility for the way that young people turned out. So it was different. So, yes, my mother and father did not have a plan for me, but as I like to say, I met people along the way who loved me for no good reason and decided to help me figure out how to get my life together to help me create a plan. But for those people, I'm not having this conversation with you today.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Yeah, absolutely. Was there something when you had your child, was there something about society and the culture that you were living in at that time? I'm not sure when your child was born, so you may want to clarify that on it. 95. Oh, right at right at the edge of Gen Z. Okay. The end of the millennials and the beginning of Gen Z. So was there something that you saw in the cultural underpinnings of society that made you say, you know what? I'm I need, I have to, I have a duty, I have an obligation and a responsibility to my child to do something differently. And if so, what was that thing?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

That was a great question. So, first of all, I didn't I want to be a parent. Uh I I I met a woman and she thought I was good enough, first of all, to marry. And then she said, Hey, and we're gonna have babies. And I'm like, no. And then she was getting close to 30 and was telling me her biological clock was ticking, and I said, No, it's digital. You can't hear it. She was having no parts of that. So, but why the reason I didn't want to be a parent is as because I recognized that I had these things that the CDC define defines as adult, I mean sorry, adverse childhood experiences. And there are ten of them, and you I'm sure you're familiar with them, but I had eight of those ten. And then that woman, her name Latanya and I, sat down and talked about our childhood, and she had seven of those ten. Collectively, we had nine of those ten things. And when you when you unpack that and think about, well, the people who are your parents and what the rest of the world thinks about your parents, they think your parents are pretty good people. And you're like, uh, I don't know. I don't think I want to do this. Um if we're gonna have a child though, we need a plan. And we need a plan primarily so that we don't mess up the child. I'm less worried about what's happening on the outside. I'm more interested in knowing what it is that I'm gonna do to help to develop the child. So that was really the the essentially the essence of the plan was how do we do better for our child than our parents did for us.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Wow. Okay. I went to the CDC's website and looked up the adverse childhood experiences. And so for the listeners, it says adverse childhood experiences or ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood between the ages of zero and 17 years. Examples include experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect, witnessing violence in the home or community, having a family member attempt or die by suicide. Also included are aspects of the child's environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding. Examples can include growing up in a household with substance abuse problems, mental health problems, instability due to parental separation, and instability due to household members being in jail or in prison. And it also does clarify that the examples are not a complete list of adverse experiences. Many other traumatic events could impact the health and well-being of a child. This can include not having enough food to eat, experiencing homelessness, or unstable housing, among many other things. Would you like to elaborate a little bit more on that for us?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Aaron Powell Yeah, I would say I'm gonna generalize them because my mother is still with this, and I I try my best not to traumatize her by having, but certainly I I lived in a home where someone abused drugs and alcohol, where someone had been incarcerated, where there was domestic violence, where there was uh mental and physical and emotional abuse. Um my wife lived in a home where there was incest. So there's yeah, there was a lot. I lived in Gary during it and went to one of the um worst funded educational systems in the country. So yeah, there was there's a lot. There was a lot.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Yeah. I'm gonna ask you a question that I asked another guest. Uh his name was Sean Dawson, and he came on the show and he talked all about fatherhood and masculinity. And I asked him, what was the moment when he felt like a father? Was it when the baby was born? When it was what was it when his wife was pregnant? Was it years later? You know, when did you actually feel like you were a father? And I want to ask you that same question.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Because, okay, um, June 24th, 1994. But my son wasn't born until June 27th, 1995. On June 24th, 1994, it was a Friday, around 7 o'clock. Latanya took me to see The Lion King. And in the Lion King, I saw Simba and Mafasa, and I had a vision for what I could be as a father. And it was at that moment that I was, okay, I'm gonna be a dad, and that's the father I'm gonna be. That's that's when I started to conceptualize what I would be as a father. Now, when I first saw my son, or when Latanya first found out she was pregnant, I started talking to the baby and that kind of thing. But certainly when he was born and I held him, obviously I knew then for sure. But the seeds about what it was I was gonna be and who I was gonna be as a father and the relationship my child and I were gonna have, I didn't know if I was helping male or female. But the scene where where Simba gets in trouble for going to the elephant graveyard and Foster goes and gets him and comes back and he says, Dad, I didn't think you were afraid of anyone. He says, But I dad was afraid, son, that something might happen to you. And he says, Dad, we're pals, right? We'll always be pals. And it was in that moment that I knew exactly what I wanted to be his father.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

Wow. So you put a date on that thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

June 24th, 1990.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

I mean, the The Lion King is one of the most influential movies, no doubt for millennials and Gen Xers. I don't know about Gen Zers, but I could definitely say Lion King was absolutely instrumental in my childhood growing up. It was part of the culture. And you're right, Mufasa as a dad, I could see why that was so impactful for you because your wife was pregnant at the time. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

No, she wasn't pregnant. She was not pregnant.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

She was not fringe. She told me she was ready to get pregnant. The biological clock was ticking. And so she took me to the movie, and I guess that was the I don't think she knew. None of us knew what the movie's gonna do to me, but everybody else piled out the theater and not set in the in the theater and cried. And I was like, okay, it's possible. I guess I should stop saying no.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Oh my gosh. That's really powerful. That is really, really powerful. So w when you were in that movie theater, was it did you have an experience where you said, you know what, I need to quote unquote settle down. I need to get my life right. Maybe, maybe there was something going on in your world or in your life at that time that you maybe knew was going not in the right direction. And then you watched this movie and you you said, you know what, I've got a I hear the message of God here or whatever the case was, and I need to, I need to get right back on the straight and narrow here. Is that sort of what happened? That's probably not a great description of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

No, no, it's a no, it's a it's a it's a it's fair, it's fair analysis. I don't think um I wasn't I don't think I needed to, that was necessarily looking to get on the straight, straight path. I was a law student and I was also a graduate student. So from that standpoint, I was already doing more than most people would have ever imagined me doing. I got up, finished undergrad, and was admitted to law school and was working on a dual uh graduate degree and uh in a JD. So from that standpoint, life was fine. I had had in my mind what I was gonna do. I was gonna be this particular kind of lawyer, and this was the work I'm gonna do, and I'm not gonna have time for children and all this kind of stuff. But and I had a tumultuous relationship with my father, so the very last thing I wanted to do was replicate the same behaviors that were historical in my family. My father didn't have a relationship with his father, my fa my relationship with my father was terrible, and I just figured, you know, what's the point? I'm gonna end up probably messing up and doing the same thing. But it was in that movie that it it it changed my idea of what it could be like. Because what I saw, if you can, if you will, I saw someone with a plan. I saw a father not only with a plan, but willing to have a village of people, or animals, if you will, that were all different.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

I can't even.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

There wasn't just this one particular community of lions. No, it was zebras and orangutans and whomever. It was everybody else that was a part of it. And I'm like wow, that's interesting. I saw a group of people wait, two people wait before they named the child. And then they presented the child to the village as if to remind the village that you're responsible for this child, because one day this child is gonna be responsible for you. It was just so much in the movie, and I thought, wow, okay, wow, I got a formula how to do this and not mess up. And and then I was excited.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

That's really amazing. And you're right, Mufasa does embody identity, formation, and responsibility, stewardship, all of those things. Whereas modern parenting narratives, and this is not a critique or an indictment on modern parenting or anything like that, but modern parenting narratives more so emphasize being an emotional support system. And it's not that Mufasa didn't play that role in Simba's life, but he was definitely in touch with the idea of responsibility and inheritance and that the idea that you're a part of something much larger than yourself. And I don't know that modern parenting really um uh embraces that.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah. Yeah, I I would agree. I would agree with you. That's what I saw. I thought, hey, a guy saying, you know, when the when it when a child comes in and says, Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, and m my father says, before 7 a.m. Well, no, before sunrise. He's your son. I I noticed at that moment there's this responsibility that this father has. He understands, I gave my child my word, now I gotta get up and do what I s what I said I was gonna do. It was just things like that that I had not seen in my own experience with my father. That I realized if a if an animated lion can do this with a cub, like what can you do as a human being?

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Wow. What an enlightening moment there for you. That's that's really amazing. I've had my own experience with that in movies as well, but I I won't share that here. Maybe another conversation for another day. So what do you think that we've been thinking about and getting completely wrong as parents? Let me rephrase that. What are parents getting completely wrong in today's world? You brought up earlier, you know, the literacy rates, waiting for something or someone, an institution to kind of step in. In terms of philosophy and culture today, it seems like it's a stark contrast in comparison to what you are doing and how you're raising your son or how you did raise your son, because he was born in 95, so he's an adult now.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

He is.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

He is well into adulthood. So what do you think parents are getting completely wrong?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I'm gonna try I try if I could try to boil it down to one thing and then we can talk about it that in terms of like the branches that it would be that parents don't understand that they're trees and that they have produced a fruit. And it is they're responsible for how sweet or bitter or bruised or battered that fruit is. If you've ever had a great piece of fruit, more often than not, you know the type of tree that produced the fruit. If that tree produces terrible fruit, eventually people chop that tree down. And I think that that's the way the parents used to understand parenting. Certainly, my grandmother would tell me all the time, she would always say trees and fruit. Um, but yeah, I don't think parents understand their role. Our role is to be the kind of tree that that nourishes, that supports, that, if you will, that holds up a child till a child can exist on their own, etc., to provide the best possible foundation. And too often today, parents think that parenting is something completely different, like work-life balance. There is no such thing. There's no such thing. You invited someone to the planet. This entity did not ask to be here. You invited them to the planet. So they're an honored guest. And rather than treating them like an honored guest, we often dishonor them and thus dishonor ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

That's so true. So are you saying essentially that people treat, and this is not everyone, of course, but is it are you basically saying that people put more care into their gardens and in their plants and in their, you know, trees and things like that out in their in their yards more so than they do their own children?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Absolutely. I would yeah, I wouldn't give you perhaps even a slightly, I don't know if it's better, but a different example, which is to say uh those of us who are fortunate enough to take a vacation oftentimes have more plans about the vacation than we do about our child's life.

unknown 25:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

So your child's on a journey, but you have no plans for that journey. But you want to take a trip to Europe, then you have all the places that you plan on seeing when you go, you know what plane you're gonna catch, you know what food you're gonna have, you've decided on which seat you want to be in. Like you know all of the details. But if you ask the parent what's the plans for your child's life, they don't have them.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

No, definitely not. Can I ask what plan or blueprint you had for your son? How did you devise this plan for him? And you know, how did he turn out?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Sure. Um, Latanya and I, my my last year of law school, and I was unemployed. And I was asking myself, like, what else could I have done? I I don't know what else I'm I'm supposed to do. A kid like me is not supposed to be here. You read the statistics. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm here and I'm unemployed. And so then I started asking myself, okay, well, what you're you're about to be a lawyer. Where could you have gone to law school and known for sure you would have had a job? And I was like, Harvard. If I come to Harvard, everybody, Nikki, when she invited me over today, she would have said Harvard lawyer, Nathaniel Turner, and I would have had to tell you anything about me. And I said, Well, why didn't you go to Harvard? Well, you didn't do well enough in undergrad. Well, why didn't you do well enough in undergrad? Well, because you weren't prepared enough in high school. Why didn't weren't you prepared in high school? And so you you see what I'm doing, you go all the way back and you say, Well, my mother and father didn't have a plan. And if Aristotle was correct, that if I bring a person, a child when they're seven, I will show them the human being. Well, then I don't know what my parents were doing before I was age seven, but I'm pretty sure I have an idea they were not planning on me going to college. So, so that with that, armed with that, Latani and I, we wrote Harvard. And that was in the old days when you tore off the card and put a stamp on it and stick it in the mail, and a few weeks later we get this application, and we use that application from Harvard to design the life for an unborn child. Harvard asked for people who obviously do well academically, so that we now call that intellectual ambition. Harvard asked in 1994 for people who are world citizens. Today we call that global and cultural competency. Um Harvard in 1994 asked for students who care for something greater than themselves. We call it that humanitarian drive. Those things became the three pillars for everything we did for Naim's life.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

Wow. And what is he doing now?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Today he is a uh he holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon, where he went to school on a full fellowship. He has an MBA from NYU Stern and Emphasis in finance and entrepreneurship and innovation, where he also went to school for free. Um he's the founder and CEO of a CEO of a company called Latimer Enterprises, and he's a co-founder of the League of Extraordinary Parents. He's a three-time author and a bunch of other stuff. But yeah, he left the country at 16 to chase a dream of playing professional soccer in Brazil. He's fluent in four languages. Like he's uh he's he's an incredible human being. I'm just grateful to be his dad.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Yeah, that's amazing. So one one argument that people would make is that, oh, well, you know, to have a child that speaks four languages, you know, you got to have money, you gotta travel, you're gonna have to take him to country, different countries. And for him to play professional soccer, well, that that's gonna require a significant financial investment. And then of course he's gonna have to have access to the most elite schools and the elite teachers and all those things to get him to that point. That's a pretty common thing that people say because I think a lot of a lot of people um rest in the idea of privilege so that they don't have to be uncomfortable with their own philosophies or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

So that to two parts, you can see I'm smiling. There's two parts to that. One one part of that is I've met a lot of families who are exceedingly wealthy, who pay people three-quarters of a million dollars or more to help them create educational strategy, educational consultants, if you will, for their children. And none of those children have produced even a fraction of what Naemas produced. So wealth and privilege are not the panacea that people believe they are. Number two, Latanya and I had nothing. Right? We had nothing. I was unemployed. But what we did have was a strategy. And when all you have is when all you have is time and no money, then you you you find out ways to be strategic. It's like people saying, hey, when we were poor, we ate these kind of things, and my mom, she she dressed it up and it tastes really good, and we didn't know how bad, how poor, we didn't know we were poor. Right? Well, that's the same thing. You don't need a lot of, we didn't need a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of money. But we we read some books. We read a book, a couple books by Glenn Doman, and one of them was How to Teach Your Baby to Read. The other was How to Give Your Child Encyclopedic Knowledge. And we just we just tried to do what the book suggested. Now, an interesting thing about Mr. Doman at the time, he was working with children with brain injuries. And children with brain injuries were learning to read by 18 months. Wow and they were able to do pretty sophisticated math problems around the same time. And Latina and I said, we don't have a child with a brain injury, so why can't we do the very same things that they're doing? It wasn't money. And again, the first seven years, the child's home with you. You know, this many states don't require kids to go to school till they're seven and eight years old. So so it's really easy to say somebody else had privilege. No, we all have the same amount of time. The question is, what are you gonna do with your time? Because I knew exactly what I was gonna do with mine.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Yeah, even if it is very limited. Obviously, we want to acknowledge that some parents they may be single parents or they may have you know certain issues or challenges that they're 30 minutes. Yeah, and their time may be limited, but it you're saying that it doesn't take hours and hours of every day.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Absolutely. Now, listen, if the sooner you can teach your child to read, the sooner your child can read to learn.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

So so the the longer you're waiting and messing around, then the more the more difficult it becomes. I learned to read as a two-year-old. And one of the things that helped him to read, Nikki, is I wrote him letters. He asked me one day, walked into the mailbox, where was his mail? And I said, Man, there's nothing in this mailbox but bills and junk. Bruh, you don't want none of this. And he was like, Daddy, but I want mail. Well, it forced me to then write him. And what I found in writing him was that I initially bought postcards and greeting cards, that I didn't have enough space, that all of the things that I thought that I was over from my own childhood was still in me. And it kept pouring out in my in the words that I was writing him. So I just wrote him. I wrote him as if, when he was two, as if he was twelve. When he was three, as if he was 33. Like I just I didn't write them at the age he was. I wrote them based upon if something were to happen to me, could he still find value in my words? And when he read those words and I helped him to read.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Yeah, so when he received these letters, these postcards, he's he's looking at it like this, and he's like, I want to be able to read this.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Yeah, they teach me to read. Yeah. I said, He says, I got mail today. I said, Yes, I know. I I sent it. Well, daddy reading it to me. And one day I said, Listen, man, I'm not gonna keep writing you in and reading it to you. So he said, Daddy will teach me to read.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Well, you got so creative with that. That's that's really impressive. Now, with him speaking four languages, you obviously don't speak four languages, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

No, I I barely speak English.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

Because I remember when I say obviously, I didn't mean that in a way that like it was obvious you didn't speak language. What it was in my mind, I was thinking that we on the pre-interview, you've remember I remember you saying that you didn't speak these languages. And so, um, how did you get your son to speak four languages?

SPEAKER_00 33:39

So, so in the in in one of the books about giving your child encyclopedia acknowledged, I think it was that, and it was one about uh bringing out the genius in black children. It was something like that. But either at any rate, one of the books suggested language tapes. They talked about the neuropathways and what happens when you expose your child. And again, even now, I'm not even gonna try to explain it scientifically because I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm gonna say that I know that if you hear, if a child, because of the sponginess, the way that we think about the child and the neuroplasticity, if you are playing different languages, the child's brain picks it up. Such that when they're finally exposed to it, it's much easier for them to learn the master language than it would be like somebody like me who's old and my brain has less plasticity. But at any rate, that's what we did. We played language tapes. If you had come to the house and come into the baby's room, you would have never heard any nursery rhymes. You'd have heard hola. Hola means hello. Come star. Right? And we do it. BNE2, you would hear these things. Or you might hear Guten Morgan, and maybe a German tape on it. That's all we did. We played language tapes. We weren't in a room with him, he was in a bed. So, but we we played the tapes. And eventually, when he got older and started reading, we would introduce him to things in other languages.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

That is incredible. I mean, the fact that you're you're coming up with all these ideas, the letters in the mail, playing the language tapes and all of that. I mean, we've all heard standard advice like, you know, play classical music, it makes your kids smart and stuff like that, but you're really thinking outside of the box here. What do you attribute that to?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Love. That's it. I mean, really, I just loved him. I wanted the best for him. Um one of the things the book, one of the things we learned from one of those books was that, for example, was to get big picture books. Again, I wouldn't have I can't, I wish I could tell you these were original ideas of mine.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

They were that he made them up and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

But get big picture books, and you get big picture books, and let's say you have a big picture book, and there's a picture of a fire engine. And so you'd hold it. The baby's laying down, the baby got nowhere to go. The baby has nowhere to go. The baby has nowhere to go. You lay the baby down on the back, and the baby can't roll and move anywhere, and so you just tell the baby what that what you're seeing. You just essentially create your own movie. This is a fire engine that's spelled F-I-R-E-E-N-G-I-N-E. Fire engines go rah. Right? You just do everything, and the color is red, and eventually, when the child starts to lose interest in that picture, you get another one. This is a lion, a lion goes, lion lives here, bro. And eventually you just keep doing that. And one day, when that child is two months old, that child says to you, Dada. And you're like, What? You can talk. And then in two months, that child is speaking in full sentences. And you're like, Well, how did that happen? You just have to look back and just say, Well, what were we doing? What was the foundation that we were laying?

SPEAKER_04 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

It makes all the sense in the world. It seems incredible to some people, but yeah, everything looks incredible if you miss the construction.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Exactly. That's exactly right. It's so funny. I was walking my dog down this road, and every day we would pass a house that was being built from the ground up every day. And we would see, you know, different levels and progress being made and all of that. And then eventually we were just walking down the road, and then there's a house, and now there's people living in it and stuff. And but but we watched it day by day being built. So you're right. So you know, it seems to me that most parents say that they want their child to thrive. Some don't, obviously. I I'm I'm well versed in the education space, and I know full well that there are some parents who absolutely do not care about their children. I know that that is the case. But there are, I would say that the overwhelming majority of parents do want their child to thrive. But if we're honest, you know, most parents aren't actually designing anything like what you're talking about. And most parents are reacting to situations, school year to school year, activity to activity. Um they're just sort of hoping that the system produces a good outcome. How do you grade today's modern day curriculums and education system honestly, if you're if you're really looking at this from an angle of what is going to produce or quote unquote human engineer, successful individuals, fulfilled individuals, people who are very capable and capable and not crippled, if you were going to grade the modern day system on how good it's doing in that regard, what grade would you give it?

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Honestly, I'd give it a D or a lore. Why is that um I don't grade the parents that way? I grade the system that way. Every year, um 15-year-olds around the world take the PISA exam. Maybe it's every third year. Every third year they take the PISA exam. Every 15-year-olds take this exam from the program for international scholastic assessment. It is given in part with the OECD, which we mentioned earlier. And the test is given to find out how well children around the world are doing in reading, math and science every year. The United States that spends, I believe, if not the most, the second most of any country, any westernized country in the world sits about in the mid-30s in math and science. That's unacceptable. That's that's as to borrow from Hillary Clinton once upon a time, that's deplorable. That's that's unacceptable. How does a nation know who knows that the future of its workforce, the future of its citizenship or citizenry, the the future of its uh public roads, etc., are all predicated on how well children do, and they would put together a system that would make you 30 something out of so many countries in the world. That doesn't make any sense at all. So I was like, I would give them a an a D. We don't have the national standard for education. We allow states to decide what is good. States are incentivized and school districts are incentivized to just to graduate children.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Um the average American reads at about an eighth-grade comprehension level. You stay in school for 12 years to be able to read at an eighth grade level. I just think the whole thing is is sort of a farce. And I'm not sure those who've created this if they fully understand the consequences of their action, but the but the bill is coming due real quickly.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Yeah, that's really interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine today, and we were kind of we hadn't spoken in a long time. Um, not because it's just because of life. You know, we're busy, he's busy, he's getting married, I'm, you know, doing my own thing and whatever. And so I texted him the other day and I just said, Hey, you good? Like just checking in with you, making sure you're good. Haven't talked to you in a while. And um, so he called me today and we we played catch up and we were talking about the modern day system of things. And, you know, my philosophy may be a little bit different than than yours, just in the sense that I believe that there is something very nefarious and very sinister going on. Because to me, people know. People in power know how to raise children. They know how to raise children who are smart, who are bright, who are very capable, because you don't see those people putting their kids in public schools. You don't see those parents doing the same things that just regular parents out here are doing. And yes, it's true that they may have more resources, more access to connections and things like that, but that's not the purpose. The the the purpose that I the point, that's not the point. The point of what I'm making is that they make a conscious effort to do things differently and play by a different set of rules than everybody else does. Absolutely. And to me, that is dark. It's it's basically saying rules for for thee, but not for me. And I do not like that. So I think it's a I do think it's very important that we clarify that this grade of a D that you've given is not to parents across the board. And this is not even a grade on parents, it's a it's a a grade on the system.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yeah, I mean, parents, parents don't parents do have a choice. So we'll we'll start with this. I'll say the obvious thing is that parents don't have a choice. If you live in America, your child's school is predicated by the zip code. If you're if you're poor, you're gonna live in a school district that's under-resourced. But more than under-resourced, you're gonna be you're gonna be in a school district where the most qualified, the most capable teachers, by and large, don't want to work in that school district. Because they're gonna consider they got too many social issues and I don't want to be there, it's too poor, the neighborhood's bad, I don't know where I'm gonna live, I have to drive into this place, et cetera. All right. So conversely, on the other hand, if you are a wealthy parent, you can live in the best school districts, or you might say, even though school districts are not good enough for me, I'm gonna put my child in some private school that's super above what my butt so the parents don't really have a choice. If you're for if you're poor, if you're too poor to be rich and too rich to be poor, you're a parent that is sort of in a quandary. Like you're gonna get whatever the system gives to you. The sad thing is that the parents who are too rich to be poor, I think most. Often that they are that they are rich, that they're getting something that's really great, and the statistics don't bear out that their schools are all of that much better than what the what the uh kids' school is on the other end, they just don't realize it until it's too late.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So it really does fall on the on the parents to make different decisions and have a different set of expectations for themselves and for their child. And so in this system of things, I think what you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you're saying that we're not consistently producing fulfilled and capable adults because of the cultural expectations that surround parents of any class, poor middle, or you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

Absolutely. We're we're waiting on someone else, if you will, to come to rescue us, to do the work. Um I school becomes a place I drop my child off, and the learning happens in this building. And the ideal that the parent is a child's first teacher is something that parents completely ignore. If like I didn't say it, educators told me that child's first, primary, most important teachers, the teachers at home, and yet the teachers at home have no qualifications and more often no interest in being a teacher. And there lies a big part of the problem. We we can work through poverty. Like people have been poor a long time. Um, you can work through that. You can work through that by having a strategy and realizing we got to do a little bit extra to help the teachers because they don't have everything they would if they were somewhere else. But we can't be poor and also outsourcing and giving up all our responsibility to a system that's already broken. You can't do that.

SPEAKER_03 45:51

Well said. I couldn't have said it any better. And I think that from my perspective, you know, schools, especially the modern day school system, whether you're in public, private, or some sort of micro school or whatever the case is, most schools, especially public, now there's variances to this, but most schools, especially public, are based around compliance, testing, standardization. So none of that is going to lead to a happy, capable, fulfilled human being. It's just not. But yet that's what our entire education system is based off of. But what you're saying is that especially based on this Harvard application, you know, that you were looking at and you were taking it very seriously as a new parent, you're trying to figure out, okay, if if Harvard, Harvard, if Harvard is my bar, what are their expectations? And how can I engineer this backwards to raise my child? You're focusing on intellectual ambition, the leadership, the global awareness, and the life design. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Right. Right. I'm focused on like the three pillars are intellectual ambition, which is I tell parents, don't be confused. It's not just grades and test scores, it's critical thinking. So I want to make sure that children have a process for thinking critically, because we we need that desperately. Secondly, I said it's global and cultural competency. The world is big, but the world is tiny. And if you can understand the global issue of someone in, dare I say, Venezuela or Iran or Palestine or Israel or wherever, well, you're more likely to be able to help us eradicate some of the problems that we now see all over the world because you you know how to relate to and understand those people's situations than they understand yours. And then lastly is the humanitarian piece. Like, I need you to care for something more than yourself. It can't be spectacle and titillation, it can't be just how much money I made, get in the bag, it can't be the size of the house or type of car. Like you have to be thinking about life from the vantage point that when your time on this planet is over and those last 50 to 75 characters are ascribed on your tomb or your urn, what will we know about you?

SPEAKER_03 48:01

Yeah, that's a powerful statement, especially the the tomb aspect. I've I've witnessed that before at UVA was teaching at an upward-bound program, and that one of the teachers they were teaching English, and one of the assignments that they had the kids do was write their own um inscription on their tomb and what that would look like. What did they want it to say? And the kids got up and they did a presentation on this, and some of the kids actually got up and they cried. They cried speaking about like who they really were and what they wanted to experience in life, what they wanted to be known for. Um it was it was very beautiful. People were clapping, there was a lot of applause. It was just um it was a moving experience. I didn't have any idea that these kids felt this way, but you know, clearly they did.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

And it was powerful. To think about life that way. Again, that's the point. We think about life backwards. You're going life is going to end for all of us. And but there'll be some record of us and somebody will tell that story. But the only way they'll tell the story that you might want them to tell is if you're living that story each day. But if you're not living that story each day, you live it to chance, right? And the chance of the odds are very unlikely they're going to tell the story uh as generously about you as you would have wanted it to be told.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

Yeah, most definitely. And, you know, question there are some cultural messaging that parents are sort of inundated with. Uh things like don't pressure kids. Let kids be kids, let them follow their passions, things like that. And I'm not against any of these things per se, but I can tell by your laughter that there's something deeper going on there. Can you help us unpack this a little?

SPEAKER_00 49:51

It's humorous because it what okay, there's a couple things. Um, number one, Wilatani and I decided that we were never going to refer to Naeem. And you didn't say this, but I hear Peter say this. He'll say, Oh, let the boys be boys.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

I wasn't gonna be able to do that. I've said that on a previous podcast before.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

So And so I say, Well, are you all familiar with Old McDonald's and the the farmer? And they're like, Yeah. So when you do that nursery rhyme with the children, and you're talking about what old McDonald is raising, do you ever talk about it in the terms of the infant? Or are you always talking about it in terms of the full-grown animal? And everybody says, Well, yeah, we Owen McDonald had a sheep, oh McDonald's had a okay. So why is it with humans you want to confuse humans by talking about boys and then later on men? It's like if you want to, you're raising men, so let's just focus on that. So we will call Naeem our man in training. So that becomes the first part. So when parents are saying that, I'm like, yo, no, I'm I'm raising a man. And and thus if I'm raising a man, a man needs to understand the rules and regulations of being a man. If I have to explain them to him at his intellectual level, at one, so be it. But the rules about being a man are unchanged. And and what I'm concerned about is that at what point in time do you decide he's a man? And what time do you is he remaining a boy? And what happens if I'm not around when he's 11? When you say maybe that's the time when he should be a man and he no longer has me as a guy, then I failed him. So I find it it's laughable to me because again, we understand it when it comes to an animal of a farm, but we don't understand it when it comes to raising children.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

No, it's really interesting. So for you, I you I know you mentioned a few things. You mentioned the language, you mentioned um just the exposure that you gave to him to different things as much as you could. Were there any other things that you did differently in the early years of your son's life that most parents probably are not aware of or just don't think of?

SPEAKER_00 52:03

I worked on me. I worked on me. I realized if I wanted him to have a great vocabulary, I need to improve my vocabulary. I need to stop coming home and saying, hey, um let me try to think of what what I might say. Hey, go and um open that door, and rather than saying, hey, that's a pantry. Would you bring me something out the pantry? I got realized I need to increase my vocabulary. I could say, today I had a great day, or I could say, today was tremendous. So the better I the better I became, the better he would become. I decided also to he started playing soccer, I want to say maybe it was four. And I was out there with other fathers, and as we typically do, we yell and scream at the at our children to run faster or work harder or kick the ball, etc. And I just looked up and down the soccer field. And I just looked at a bunch of parents who could not physically do any of the things we were yelling at our children to do. And I was like, you know, this is the hypocrisy of all hypocrisies. So I made him a promise that I was gonna get him the best shape of my life. And for my 35th birthday, because he was turning five, I competed in my first bodybuilding contest.

SPEAKER_04 53:20

Good for you.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

I lost about 40 pounds, like I've got myself in really great shape. Um, but I did that because of him. And I would say that's basically been my relationship with him. I realize I'm the tree. The more he's gonna accomplish, the easier it becomes if he has a model around him. They just keep trying to get better, too.

SPEAKER_03 53:41

Yeah. Was there ever a moment in his childhood where you realized, oh, this is really working? Because this it almost sounds a little bit theoretical, a little bit experimental. You know, you're designing around, you're you're raising a child, you're designing a child's life plan and building this, laying this foundation um around a framework that you did not know yourself.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 54:06

And so I'm wondering if there was ever a point in in your child's life where you were like, okay, I think I'm getting something right here.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

So two things that so first one is I didn't I didn't know the framework. Um you're correct. I did have an image of someone though that really resonated with me, and that was Paul Robison.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

I was gonna say Mufasa.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Yeah, well that that was for me as a dad, but but as a sort of the finished product, I just keep thinking, I thought about Paul Rob Roberson. He was an all-American in football, and like he was the highest paid performer in in America as a black man, he played Othello and he could sing in like 20 some languages, like it was incredible. And I was like, wow, okay, that's a model. Um But I think when he was when he was two, the actually there's so many times when we we had introduced him to languages that I mentioned, and one of those was Spanish, and we he had a daycare babysitter essentially. She was a wonderful lady named Kathy. But we we realized, okay, this is great, this first year is fine with her, but we need some more if we're gonna get him to this destination. So we we enrolled him at the time into kinder care. Not not again, this shows we didn't have any money, so it wasn't an elite place. We enrolled him in kinder care. But we fortunately had he had a lady that worked with him, her name was Daisy. And Daisy would say to us, she would talk about her baby. So Naim had become her baby. And one day we pick her, pick him up, and she says, Does my baby know Spanish? And I was like, I I don't know. Like, I don't know. And she says, Because I spoke to him and he spoke it back. Oh. And then I was like, holy oh, the language tapes. Like, because he don't speak it to me because I don't know Spanish. All I'm doing is playing language tapes and read a rabbit and jumpstart on the video games, and he's doing it, but I I don't know. So I guess when Daisy starts to speak to him, he knows enough from those interactions to be able to have a conversation back with her. I was like, wow, that was different. And in the two, we took him because we wanted to put him in a foreign language school in an international school of Indiana, and they required that we go get him tested for his cognitive ability and his hand-eye coordination and all this nonsensical stuff. So we took him. And the lady was asking him questions at a two-year-old level, three-year-old level, four-year-old level, and he would not answer these questions at all. But then right around six, he started answering her questions and seven and eight and nine, and she stopped and she says, Oh my goodness. I can't give him any credit for the stuff of his age, but he's able to answer stuff as the with the vocabulary of a nine-year-old. And I'm like, okay. So yeah, we just started to see little things like that, and then we would hear from our peers who made fun of us at first. Because, you know, right, you why are you playing those language tapes and why you always reading to him? And I was like, okay, like, all right. Then suddenly that their answer was, Well, he's a genius. And I was like, okay. Y'all didn't watch the house to your point earlier.

SPEAKER_04 57:11

Just discredit everything you've done.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

Now he's a genius. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:17

So no work put into it or anything.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Just he didn't do anything. But yeah, so you just you, you know, you you watch those things in terms of his his ability to be a humanitarian. We saw him, I think he was four or five. He was at the school at the school, he's starting the three-year-old program. So he had been four, and they had a new student for the four-year-old program. And he and I were talking at night, we would unpack how the day went, and we would read some stuff together. And I said, Is there anybody that you've met who seems like they're having trouble fitting in? He says, Yeah, there is a new girl in our class and nobody plays with her. I said, Was there anything you think you could do? He said, Well, let me sleep on it. I'll tell you in the morning.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

No, he didn't.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

Yes, he did. So the next morning, we have to drive to the school and we pass a marsh, which is now Kroger. We pass the marsh and he decides he wants me to stop. I said, It's too late now. You should have mentioned me. He says, Okay, in the morning, we're gonna stop, Daddy. So that next morning we stop. We go in the marsh. He orders a dozen red roses and some balloons. A four-year-old takes flowers and balloons to a classmate. The teacher calls my my wife about two hours later, and she's in tears. All the kids are playing with the little girl now. And I was like, okay. We got the intellectual piece going on. He's got the inner, he's got the global piece, he's learning another language, he's speaking Spanish and picking up some French. And man, he cares about something greater than himself.

SPEAKER_03 59:03

That makes me tear up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

Four years old.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Was there I doubt this is I doubt this was ever the case, but you know, a lot of people say that parents are putting too much expectations on kids, that we have too much, too many expectations in school, academia, you know, things are much harder now than they used to be. You know, a lot of people say things like that. And so how did your son respond to these expectations that you had of him?

SPEAKER_00 59:31

I think, Nikki, yeah, what I always tell people, what I would what I always encourage you to do, I say, hey, ask him. Because I know you, if you ask me, I obviously I'm giving you my perspective of how it was. So I never shy away from that. But what I what I what I believe I would he would tell you is the person who put the most pressure on him was him. Long when he ago when he first long ago, when he first started school, one of the things I said to him was, This is your education. It's not mine. And and we talked about that. So like this again, when you're when you're talking to a young person as if they're your peer rather than your subordinate, you just have an honest conversation. I say, son, one day, you know, you may not understand this now, but one day, whatever you do or don't do, these are the outcomes you're gonna get. And this is your education, not mine. I can't make you go to school, etc. And so I remember us again, he's playing soccer. It's a Friday. I just want to, it's a beautiful day outside. We have these matching soccer uniforms, he and I do that we were training. So I put my uniform on. I said, Come on, man, let's go outside and keep them on. He says, No, Daddy, I need to work on my homework. I said, dude, it's Friday. It's Friday. I know, Daddy, but if I do my homework now, I have the entire weekend to do all the other stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

And I was like, who are you? Like, who are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Like, who are you? But then it dawned on me, right? This is the these are one of the lessons you've been saying. And he's been, they've been soaking in, and this is what he wants to do. So, no, I didn't want him to go to Brazil. He wanted to leave the country. I didn't care if he played soccer, he wanted to play soccer at the highest level. He wanted to run track, he wanted to be a national finalist. I I I didn't run track. That that wasn't my thing. He would say, Okay, I need you to coach me, and you need to figure out what we're doing. Um, I didn't want him to, didn't think he would be an engineer. He's the one who said, I know exactly what I want to do with my life. So um he pushes, he actually pushes and pulls me forward, and I just have to figure out how to keep up and do better.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:34

Yeah, exactly. Get in shape, do a bodybuilding contest.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

Absolutely. He told me at 16 as he was getting ready to go to Brazil. We were sitting in the car and I was in there crying like a big baby. And he's like, What's wrong with you? And I said, Man, you've gotten here much faster than I intended. He said, Well, Dad, I mean, I'm just doing what I dream of doing, right? He says, What are your dreams? Nikki, I said, I don't have any. I know I don't have any dreams. My dream was you. And here you are, and now you're getting to go. He looks at me, he says, Daddy, well, it's not too late. You still have time, you can do more.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

And that's that's his charge to me. Even now, I mean, I'm still trying to do what he encouraged me to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:21

You know, this has really got me thinking because you see yourself sort of as an architect and a designer of your son's life. However, you didn't micromanage every aspect of his life. And so I'm wondering, was there a point in which you sort of took your hands off the wheel for a second and allowed him to direct the course of his own life? Or did that just happen kind of organically? You know, just one day he just said, you know, dad, this is what I want to do. And you sort of just went with it, and then it it it stayed on that trajectory for a good period of time for or for the rest of his life. Or was there a moment where you said, I'm going to, I have to let him make these driving decisions. Was it him or was it you? Or maybe a combination of the two that kind of led to this break from you being the full-blown architect and designing everything around this kid's life to, you know, allowing him some independence?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

No, I think it's a great question. Uh again, I I'm not gonna be so arrogant to suggest that I know exactly when that might happen, because uh I always say to people that you're not who you think you are, and you're not who you believe others think you are. You're precisely who those you choose to be in a relationship understand you to be. So I I in my mind, I'm like, I don't know that I did that, that I was trying to be in control of anything. But there probably were times when I was quite insistent about what would take place. But I'd like to believe that certainly the majority of his life was about him having his own agency. To the extent that I would say, okay, I don't, I'm certainly not gonna let you get hurt. But if you tell me you want to do something, I want to try it, I'd say, okay, listen, this is one thing I would say. If you start, you gotta finish it. Like if I if I'm investing time and money in this too, bruh, you gotta finish it. So uh, you know, when he was three, he wanted to be in the in Disney movies. And the local Broadway production of Ragtime was in town. So he Latina found the uh an ad for it, and she told him about it, and he said, I want to try out. It was for the lead character's son. And so he, I was teaching at a school part-time, and he stops by to tell me that he got the job. I got the position. I told you I was gonna get it. I said, Okay, okay. So we wanted to take him to the rehearsals and to the shows at night, and he would refuse. He would just want us to drop him off and let him take care of himself. So it feels like that's part of what Latani and I tried to do the entire time was to make sure he had agency of his own. But um, we certainly weren't irresponsible. This we're gonna just let you run out in in traffic, but as much as we could with some limited amount of guardrails, we kind of let him like it's your life. What do you want from your life? And he steered us in the direction and we helped to make those things a reality.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:33

Yeah, I appreciate the the part where you said that you you start something, you finish it, because that's exactly what my mom taught me all the time. And she would I if I wanted to quit or this or that, she was like, Nope, we you are it's fine if you quit when you're done. Once you're done with it and you have reached the end, you don't have to do it anymore. But if you start this, you are finishing, you are completing that cycle. It's not, you're not we're not creating you know quitters in this family. Um, but you You know, even um uh I guess what I'm trying to s get at is that even a more sophisticated understanding of what you've really done, because a lot of parents are kind of either or they're like, Okay, well it's it's either self-directed learning and total autonomy, or it's I'm the director of this child's life and there's really no room for nuance in the middle. But it, you know, if I was thinking of a metac metaphor. And if you think of like a city planner, somebody who's on the board and you know, designing things and whatever, planning things out, that city planner doesn't dictate where every single person goes and walks every single day.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:33

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

But they do design the roads, the parks, the schools, transportation systems, the public spaces, and they influence the structures in in that people use and move and grow in. And I think that really what you've done is you've applied that same concept to to childhood because as a parent, you've exposed him to books and ideas and languages and words, and that's incredibly powerful. You've exposed him to high expectations, but also a healthy, healthy dose of curiosity, you know, and you've also, like you said, worked on yourself. So you weren't being a hypocrite in any of this. And I'm sure that he I'm sure that he called you, you know, called you out on a couple of things. I know I would have done it if I were a kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

Yes, I I I've got a story or two of those. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

Yeah, I want to hear this.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

So, so well, this is uh him telling me once it's is he three? He's three. He's three. I'm telling him to go take a nap. And he doesn't want to go take a nap. So I said, hey man, did you hear what I said? And he stomps up to the landing and he looks down at me. He says, Daddy, you are rude and foolish, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself and you owe me an apology.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

And I'm like, dude, if you don't get you something stairs, I'm like, I'm like, do I bow? Am I supposed to bow or punch him in the mouth?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:08

It's on full-blown demon time right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

Yeah, but no, I mean that that he's he's not been one, he's never been shy of holding his tongue. But why would he? Because that's his dad is like that. So he just does. I I get back um as good as I give, he gives he gives it back to me the same way. He still does to this day.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

So that's really cute. Um, I just love the fact that you've given him so much intellectual stimulation, which is really, you know, where I think a lot of his curiosity stemmed from. And then you also, you know, modeled for the most part. You modeled what you wanted to see out of him, even though you didn't have access to those same frameworks and structures and stuff like that. Um, and then you guys, you know, as a family, you worked really hard to make sure that he had some level of access to resources. And then you also encouraged him. You know, you encouraged him to pursue his own answers to questions and opportunities and things like that. And honestly, uh, that to me doesn't sound complicated. I'm sure it was hard, but it doesn't sound complicated.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:11

It it you know it's only complicated when you don't do you don't start planning. Like if you if you and I were gonna try to meet somewhere and either one of us had a GPS, it would be complicated.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

But if you and I have a roadmap of what we're doing, yeah, there may be some pitfalls along the trip, but it's not as complicated. I I I would like to say that the way I've looked at Naem's life is very much like this. There's an O3M commercial. Do you you you remember it says, we don't make the products you use, we just make the products that you use better.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Oh no. But I hear you.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:46

So my my thought as a father is much like the book The Alchemist. I I am not Naem is Santiago, and every person has a legend or pyramid that they're trying to reach. The the job of a parent, in my eyes, is to help a child who has big audacious hopes and dreams, help to make those audacious hopes and dreams better. My job is not to tell him where to go, where his legend is, where his pyramid is. My job is to tell him where the pitfalls are and the minefields are so that he might get to the place he's trying to get to. I'm not trying to change your destination, I'm not trying to tell you where to go or go where I went. I'm just saying I've I've actually been on this journey. Here's the things that trip me up, here's the places I fell and stumbled. Hey, how about you figure out not to do that? And you'll those hopes and dreams you have will be more likely to happen than not.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:43

Yeah, yeah, I hear you on that. So, a couple of questions before you before we close out today. Sure. Do you think that modern parenting culture is just setting expectations way too low for children?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

Yes, but again, I would say the trees have low expectations of themselves. Right. So are you capable of raising expectations of someone else if you don't expect much more of yourself? Yeah, I'm that maybe rhetorical, but I've I mean it doesn't happen very often.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:19

Yeah. There was a one thing, it was probably a I don't even know, a year or two ago. I got a full-blown headache from this experience that I had. So there was a Gen Zier on Facebook, and I'm a huge proponent of reading and literacy. I mean, I've I've sit here, I've got like of mice and men right here in my hand. I've had books everywhere, I've got, you know, I mean, I've just got books everywhere, everywhere. I even went to a pet shop yesterday to give my dog a bath and get her some cookies. And they had this little uh rack in the middle of the store, and it was one of those racks where you can like you can spin it, you know, to look at all the different stuff that's on it. It was books.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:01

And I'm so and that's where I was. You know, I could have gone anywhere in the store, but I'm just so book centric. I mean, just uh I don't know. That's just kind of how I am. I'm just all about books. I cannot be more attracted to books than I already am. That's the one thing I will always pick up. Doesn't matter if I'm at a yard sale, a pet store, a mall, it does not matter. Um I'm I'm getting books. I'm walking out of that store with a stack of books.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:26

Do you know when that started?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:27

It's um that's a good question. So my parents, they they taught me, my dad primarily taught me how to read, but I I can't attribute anyone's particular actions, although it may have been this, but I can't attribute anyone's particular actions to my love of books. It's innate, it's internal. It's something internal and very unique to me that my parents and my grandparents have always noticed. Always. They've just been like, oh yeah, she's just picking up a book. It's just what she does. So anyway, um, I love reading and I know the power of reading. I know that reading can stimulate, of course, your hippocampus. I know that reading can stimulate the imagination. I know, I know it does a lot of things, but the one thing that reading it's kind of a secret, just kind of a low-down secret that I never tell anybody. But that one of the things that reading can do that people don't realize is it can make you remember who you are and who you were meant to be. And that's the one of the most powerful things about reading. That um, yeah, it's one of the reasons why I love it so much. Well, anyway, so short story long, I was on Facebook and I was promoting something about reading, I don't remember. And then this Gen Z and Gen Zers, I teach Gen Zers, I've been teaching for 13 years in a public school setting, and you know, the reading is not great amongst this generation. And so, anyway, one of them is a parent, a Gen Zer is a parent, and they commented back on my post and they said that reading was not important and that they had their child and that they were not quote unquote going to force reading on their child. I was like, what? Like, I I even to this day, I still don't even really know how to articulate what I'm fully thinking in my head over that. But even my mom read the post and she got a headache over it. She was like, that parent is doing a massive injustice to their child, and that child is gonna grow up crippled because they cannot read well and they're not gonna, they're not gonna understand. And a lot of Gen Zers feel that way. They think, oh, well, why do I need to? Um, the kid even said this. I call him a kid. He's in his 20s, but I'm, you know, I'm 38, so I call him a kid. But he even said in his post, he was like, Why would I teach my child, you know, reading and have have them conjure up images in their brain when I can just put them in front of a YouTube video and they can get the same stimulation? And I'm like, that's that these these two things are not the same. Anyway, that's me ranting. But any thoughts on on that before I ask you the next question? Because what you said just kind of like reminded me of that moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:09

Well, yeah, I'm I'm I'm with you on reading, and I'm also with you. You didn't add the writing, so I'm also component.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:17

That's my bread and butter.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:18

I'm a ghostwriter, I edit books and stuff like that. So yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Yeah, so I do that every day, the first first 20 minutes of every day. I write my life the way I'd like it to be, not the way that it is. I call it journaling forward. So so yeah, I would agree. We're this those are the kinds of things I'm talking about where parents today, because they don't have a manual, because we don't say to a parent from the beginning, hey, listen, you know, the the um United Negro College friends used to have a say, mind is a terrible thing to waste. Like we could say that for everybody, and reading is one of those things that we waste an opportunity to enhance our minds. But I mean, I don't know what else to tell you other than I'm not surprised, and it's a s it's it's sad, but there I mean there are not there's not a whole lot of people pro that are proponents of parents understanding that. So for it real quick, we're running a program um and we're doing it locally for starters, but it's called Empowered to To Lead, Ready to Read. And so we're working with families here in the Indianapolis area to teach the parents on the science of reading so that they will know how to do more at home with their children. And then we're working with the children simultaneously in different rooms to help the children who you know our many schools here have a proficiency, a third grade reading proficiency, probably 20% or lower. In the state of Indiana, I don't know if you know this, the state of Indiana passed a law recently that if a child cannot read at the third grade level, they cannot be promoted. Yeah, I'd heard some talking about that on the news. So like, hey, you all that person who just said that to you, uh, if they live in Indiana, they're setting their child up to never see the fourth grade.

unknown 1:17:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:09

That's fascinating. In a negative way. And it goes back to what you're saying that the expectations are too low. It's it's too low for you can't raise the bar of your own child if you can't raise it for yourself. And that's just that's just the bottom line. Um so in your opinion, if every parent adopted a similar mindset as the one that you and your wife was it La Tanya? Let's I don't want to call her Latoya just because I thought it was Latanya. Um, is there it if every parent adopted you and Latania's mindset in terms of like designing a child's life and re-engineering this, you know, this experience that you want them to have backwards and they were to adopt this mindset tomorrow and keep that ongoing throughout their child's life. Yeah. How do you think society would look in 30 years?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

I think it would look vastly better. I would say this with one caveat, which would be the parents first have to have a big dream. Because you could do backward design and you could say, I just want my kid to eat out of the garbage can. Well, then you could backward design that too. Yeah. Um so the question is, are do you have any real aspirations? If you could if we could get parents, and I ask parents this typically, like, what are your uh hopes and dreams for your child? And you oftentimes have to unpack that for them because we've been forced to stop dreaming. You love to read, and part of the things that I would imagine that books do for you or did for you is they allow you to escape to places that you may not have been able to go to. So in somewhere they're like a a continuum of a dream. Like I I'd never been anywhere outside of Gary, Indiana, but I had been in books. So, but we have to we can get parents to start dreaming because somewhere along the line of our childhood, people tell us that dreaming means that you know you just you know, daydreaming. It becomes a sort of a bad thing. Stop, like you're wasting time on that. Okay, so you stop, so we all stopped dreaming. So the question is, can it work? Sure. But we'd have to help parents to start dreaming again. Because I don't think you can raise dreamers again if you're not yet a dreamer yourself. So if you get parents to reimagine what it was like, what they really wanted for their lives, then yeah, maybe we'd be able to do that. And in 30 years, it it would look the world will look a little bit different.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:45

Yeah, totally. And it's interesting because some parents might say, Well, I don't know how to dream big anymore. I don't know how to dream. And you know, and that's okay because just I think really the point is just start where you are.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:56

Start where you are. If you can't, if you can't envision yourself, you know, being a billionaire by tomorrow, which a lot of people can't can't do that. They can't conceptualize that thought in their mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:06

And what you want to be that?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:08

It's too big, you know. And but you know, start where you are and and then gradually. So, like if it's about money, you know, for example, you could just say, okay, all right, a billion dollars tomorrow, that's too much for me to dream about. I cannot contemplate that. But what about, you know, an extra hundred dollars a month?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:29

Can you vision can you envision that, you know, and then just kind of gradually grow from there? It doesn't have to be an immediate thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:36

You know, you can grow crawl, crawl if you will, before you walk. Um I would I sometimes ask people this, I say, Well, if you can't figure out how to dream, let me ask you this. Whatever you believe in, I don't know. It could be God, it could be the universe, whatever. Uh, if that thing taps you on your shoulder right now and said at the end of today, unless you can tell me why I should give you a tomorrow, this is it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:59

Yeah. Facts.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:01

I'm like, I bet you'll come up with something that you dream of doing. I am almost certain you will come up with something. Which means it's there, but you just haven't found the right motivation and incentive to do that. But sometimes thinking about the end of your life is the very thing. We see it all the time. That suddenly people who are out of time, all they want is more time. No matter how much money they have, no matter what they've accomplished, they want more time. My grandmother turned a hundred in January. Um, she is in no hurry to leave this planet. My m Cidney's my father-in-law, he's 102. And he told us recently he wants to be around another eight years.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:44

So these certain people still want to make contributions, and if you just say, Well, what is it you want to do? Maybe then that'd be the spark to get people to start dreaming again.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:54

That question. Woo, man, yeah. If some if something were to, you know, if something bigger than yourself were to tap you on your shoulder, that that kind of gave me a little bit of chills. It really did. It even activated something in me, and I know these things. So yeah, I appreciate that a lot. So, Nate. Just not Mr. Turner or Nathaniel. Just me. I know what you mean. Um, when you get called Nathaniel, my um my name is Nikki, and um my dad, if he calls me Nicole, it's yeah. I know it's something serious, so I get it. Um, but uh, you know, we're actually let me ask you this question first. This is a question that I always ask all the guests that come on the gentle year, and you can interpret it however you want to interpret it. So it's totally open-ended. The question is, and I'm really excited to hear your answer because I think it's gonna be really unique and extraordinary, no pressure. But what do you think is the most important education that a child could ever receive?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:52

Oh, the most important education.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:56

And every guest, every guest always has a different answer, which was what makes it kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:02

Well, I mean, science would tell me the most important time in a child's life is the first thousand years, first thousand days.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

The first thousand years.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:11

The first thousand days maybe one day. The first thousand days. What's the most important life lesson a child could learn is love. Love of self. Um, yeah, I think that beyond, because I don't know that I could convince Naeem to read if Naeem did not first understand to love himself, or that the loving himself showed up in a way that he he loved other people. So I would say that might be the most important lesson that would just helping the child understand what it means to love and moreover, to be love.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:50

Yeah, exactly. Because that initial relationship, that that relationship that he has with you, his his first caretaker.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:58

Yep. Yep. That's it. I tell people that I couldn't figure out how to put him to sleep the f the first night we brought him home. And Lat Latani was exhausted, and she starts to hand me this baby. And of course, I have no manual, I don't know what I'm doing. And I almost wanted to push my hands to give him back to her. And I didn't. I held him, I leaned back in his chair, like at a 45-degree angle, and put his head on my heart and he went to sleep. And for the next several days, whenever he needed a nap, I would say, Give him here. And I would lean back and I'll put him here. And I was like, and I tell people in that moment, my son and I learned to connect at the heart. So I do believe that that perhaps is the most important lesson, which is learn how to connect with people at the heart.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:48

What a major evolution for you, somebody who didn't even want to have a kid, and now you're this. I mean, that is a serious character arc.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:57

Now you're gonna make me cry.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:59

So it's really amazing. So, okay, Nate, uh, where can we find you? How can we connect with you? Um, of course, I'm gonna extend an invitation for you to come on our fate come in our Facebook community, The Gentle Year. You're more than welcome to come in there. That's where the listeners of the show kind of participate in these parent-based conversations and stuff. But where can we find you specifically?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Um, yeah. The simplest thing is obviously everybody has a a website, so there's Nathanielaturner.com, N-A-T-H-A-N-I-E-L-A-T-U-R-N-E-R dot com. The work that I do with with families and students, and I mentioned the new um reading initiative we have, that you can find out at the League of Extraordinary Parents, which is um L X T-R-A-P.com. And those are like the I mean, I'm on social media, but I'm not on social media. Hopefully I'll be on, I'll do a better job. I've had some people talk to me about getting on TikTok and uh uh being silly, allowing the version of me who I've always wanted to be, which is a comedian. I used to want to do stand-up. Oh I did. I wanted to quit school. Uh I was terrible, I was terrible in undergrad. And so I went to quit and become a teen Nettie Murphy perform, and I was like, I want to do that. And so uh Start working on my own material and everything, and my mother told me, you know, I'd be better off as a clown. So so thanks, Mom. So I didn't, I did not, I did not do it. But I'm convinced that one day soon I'm gonna walk into a comedy club on open mic night, and I'm gonna I'm gonna tell some jokes.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:44

Please, please, I don't care where you are in the world, please let me know when this is gonna take place. I will buy a ticket.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:52

I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna put it on my on my my vision board, I suppose. Most of those things have come to fruition now, but yeah, that that's where you can find me. You can find me in fame with a with a bag on my head after I go out and make a fool out of myself in someone's comedy club.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:10

Well, I'm super excited for you, and I know that will not happen, but I'm I am excited. I appreciate it. It's gonna be good stuff. Well, Nate, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for this really enlightening cultural conversation on parenting. We really appreciate your time today, and thank you for coming on the gentle year.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:26

My my pleasure, and thank you. And I want to say to your listeners, um, I apologize if in any way I messed up last week or two weeks ago I was supposed to be on and I made an error. So it's not Nikki's fault, it was my fault. So please forgive or blame me. All right, that's I'm done.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:41

You are my public service announcement. You're a humble man. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:45

Thank you so much. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:48

This episode is supported not just by the partners doing meaningful work for families and students, but you. Thank you so much for listening, for sharing, and for being a part of these conversations. If something in today's episode resonates, Resonated with you, or you'd like to learn more about the partners who support this work, you can find all of the details in the show notes.